Alright Aquillion remove it despite the entry already explain why.
"Run away" isn't "fight". When one run, they accept that can't fight (or don't won't to). When you run away, you don't fight (think, if someone say "You can't fight me" and you run away, then say you've fought them afterward is just pathetic). The entry already state what would count as fight the prophecy, raise their son as a good person (his parent), or stay with his foster parents (, or simply just talk to them, for Oedipus), both would count as fighting against the fate. But nah, all accept that they can't do anything about it and run away, essentially try to find easy way out and see if fate would change their mind.
Those who actually fight fate are ones that defy the prophecy and crafting their own destiny. Not every characters succeed, but at least they fight it. Run away simply telling fate that "I don't want this one, can you give me another?", you already accept that you can't fight and beg for alternative.
Anyone who attempts to avert a fate is fighting it. Trying to get rid of a child who is prophesied to do something, or to run away from a place where you're prophesied to do something, is the archetype example of trying to fight your fate. That's why Self-Fulfilling Prophecy and Nice Job Breaking It, Herod exist as two of the main examples of You Can't Fight Fate.
Accepting your fate means accepting that it is inevitable. Someone who is trying to avert it, by any means, is trying to fight it; and certainly something as dramatic as sending away a child is a very extreme, tooth-and-nail, absolutely brutal attempt to fight fate at any cost.
You're criticizing them for not fighting their fate in the way you prefer; but that's just... not related to this trope. An unbuilt trope averts the usual mechanisms of the trope in action.
Oedipus is playing the trope entirely straight. They receive a prophecy, they try to avoid it and, in so doing, turn it into a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
Your proposal for what they could have done instead (going on with your life as though nothing has changed, confident that you can "fight" your fate in small ways and avoiding big dramatic actions like they used to attempt to defy it in these stories) is the more post-modernist / deconstructive approach. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that if they did what you suggested, *then* they would belong on the page, since the actions you're suggesting they take go against the grain of the typical Oedipus-style You Can't Fight Fate / Self-Fulfilling Prophecy story.
But something like "I will defy fate by sending away my child so they can't kill me" only to have the child kill you because they never knew you? That's a very basic bare-bones example of the trope, with nothing unusual about it. They thought they could fight fate and it got them anyway, the end.
Edited by Aquillion
Should Oedipus count as Unbuilt Trope for You Can't Fight Fate?
Despite usually count as the most well-known example, nobody in the story actually fight fate. Oedipus' parents don't fight fate, else they would raise the baby themselves. Neither is Oedipus, else he would stay with his foster parents to prove that the prophecy is BS. And I think we can agree that either of that would avoid the whole mess.
They don't fight fate. They accept it and try to run away instead of fight it, leave themselves in hand of fate again.
Edited by Kuruni Hide / Show Replies